He turned the ignition, and the steering wheel blasted apart.
He was still alive when the paramedics found him. The police could identify him from his license plates and the ID in his wallet, which was fortunate. His face was hardly human.
Later, the police described with grudging admiration how the bomber had rigged the airbag system, turning it into a bomb that delivered high-speed metal filament shrapnel rather than air.
Orosco lived for three days, long enough to tell the police what had happened. He served the purpose the assassin required. He spread a warning to anyone else contemplating a break with his cartel employers.
The assassin left no trace, aside from several other candy skulls strewn around the perimeter of the restaurant. The police were never able to find the man who delivered lunch. Orosco could not give a description. Orosco’s mobile phone gave no information about where the call had been placed.
It was this incident that led the media to give the assassin a name: Calavera, the skull. Some were horrified by the assassin’s efficiency. Some decided that criminals killing criminals was none of their concern. But everyone agreed: Calavera had earned his pay. He had as much capacity for mercy as the candy skulls he left in the Gatsby’s parking lot, grinning up at the eyes of Dr. T. J. Eckleburg like some kind of challenge.
When I was done relaying the story to Maia, we were both quiet, listening to the storm outside. There wasn’t much to say about Calavera. The story spoke for itself.
“You scuttled the boat,” Maia said. “Why?”
“I don’t want Calavera to get away.”
“Why not?”
I didn’t answer.
She was right. It would’ve been easier to leave the killer an out, let him brave the storm, hopefully sink to hell if he tried. Why would I want to cross a man like Calavera?
“You want to control the situation,” Maia said. “It’s not so much about the killer, is it? It’s about Ralph again.”
“It’s always Ralph with you, isn’t it?”
Maia dug her toes into my ribs. “I’ve got guilt, too. But I handle it differently. I wouldn’t try to stop my career. If I wasn’t pregnant, I mean.”
“Convenient excuse.”
“Oh, yeah.” She winced as she rearranged her legs. “So convenient. The point is, Ralph’s death made you feel powerless. You don’t want anything else to get out of your control. You tried leaving investigation completely, but now that you’ve got a killer on your hands, you can’t stand the idea of him getting away from you. You’re maybe not so different from Jesse Longoria.”
“All right, that was low.”
“I’m wrong, then?”
“Completely. Well…mostly.”
“Ralph, I think, would have something to say about now.”
“Yeah?”
Maia nodded. “‘You’re full of shit, vato.’”
Her imitation was so good it made my heart sore. “That’s irreverent.”
“Ralph was irreverent. He was also right about a lot of things.”
I pulled myself up next to Maia as best I could without jostling her. I kissed her forehead. If I didn’t look down, I could almost imagine that she wasn’t pregnant. Like old times—before everything changed.
Ralph’s death and my decision to marry Maia were not as simple as cause and effect. But they were connected emotionally. We both knew that. They resonated from the same terrible winter week.
“I miss him,” I said.
Maia’s breath was sweet and warm. Our forearms touched. The storm outside wailed steadily. I felt my eyes closing.
“Try to sleep,” Maia told me. “You need the rest.”
“Wake me up in an hour?”
“I will.”
I drifted off, imagining Ralph Arguello grinning above me, telling me I was a pretty sorry piece of work.
In my dream, I was sitting on the back deck of Peter Brazos’s house in Port Aransas. It was nighttime, New Year’s Eve. Lights from the houses across the channel reflected like oil fire on the black water. On the edge of Brazos’s dock, a little candy skull glittered.
Peter had his computer in his lap, a vodka Collins in his hand. He was talking to me casually, telling me about his case against the drug cartel.
I wanted to warn him. I knew his house would explode any minute, but my dream self felt it would be rude to interrupt.
“It’s all about emotional leverage,” he told me. “What do they fear worse than their bosses? What makes them crumble inside? Find that, and they’ll tell you what you want. They’ll testify to anything.”
Peter had dark glittering eyes like the little skull on his dock. His skin was pale in the moonlight.
When he lifted his glass to his lips, I said, “Shouldn’t you get your family out of the house?”
He glanced behind him. “Too late,” he said sadly. “You can’t control everything.”
Then I noticed the building behind us wasn’t Brazos’s house. It was the Rebel Island Hotel. And as the windows flared red, I realized that it wasn’t Brazos’s family in there. It was Garrett and Maia.
“Here’s to leverage.” Peter Brazos lifted his glass to the flames. “Happy New Year, Tres.”
“Tres.” Maia was shaking my shoulder. “Tres, I can’t get up. You need to get it.”
Someone was banging on the door. “Navarro!”
I had no idea how long I’d been out. My eyes still burned from the fire in my dream. I stumbled out of bed and opened the door.
Chase was standing there, looking like the ghost of keg parties past. “We went for ice.”
I blinked. “Chase, as direly important as that information is, why did you wake me up?”
“We found him.” His voice cracked with emotion. “I think you’d better come see.”
20
Jose heard yelling from the floor below.
“It’s in the kitchen,” Imelda said.
“Yes,” he said. “We will stay here.”
She bolted for the door, but he caught her arm. “It can wait, Imelda. We have enough trouble.”
She slumped down miserably on a stack of folded sheets. The linen closet was almost the size of a guest room. In the illumination of his flashlight, the shelves of folded sheets and towels reminded Jose of mummies—small bodies wrapped in white. He’d seen things like that in Mayan villages, long ago, in the Mexican army. He didn’t like the memory coming back now.
“Señora Navarre asked for tea,” Imelda murmured. “I told her I would bring her some.”
“Will she give birth here?”
“I don’t know.” Imelda shivered. The twenty years they had been married, they had lived in only hot places, but Imelda was always cold. Jose told her it was because her heart was so warm. Back home in Nuevo Laredo, she once cared for a dove with a broken leg for a month before it finally died. She would cup moths in her hand and release them outdoors rather than kill them. And the children…the last day they had gone to school, she had buttoned their shirts and fussed with their hair and slipped iced oatmeal cookies into their lunch bags.
“Jose,” she said quietly. “We can’t—”
“Don’t say it,” he warned. “It’s your own fault.”
A tear traced her cheek. He didn’t like being harsh with her, but the truth was the truth. Imelda had brought them so much trouble. Her warm heart again. She would never understand that some broken birds would not heal. They would die whether you cared for them or not. It was no mercy to prolong the pain.
He knelt beside her and took her hands. “We will survive this, mi amor. The storm will pass over.”
She met his eyes, but he couldn’t tell if she believed him. It seemed cruel to him, that she had suffered with a husband like him. He was not worthy of her. He had known that since the day they first met, at the dance at Señor Guerrero’s ranch. They had talked under the orange trees and watched the stars. She had been beautiful in her white dress. She had seemed to him like an empty cup, waiting to be filled with his stories. She found him fascinating, rough, perhaps a bit scary. She thought she could change him, make him into a good man. She had never given up on that idea. And he had married her anyway, knowing he would only bring her pain.
But he just kept promising things would be better. And she kept believing.
More noises came from the kitchen—distressed voices, the sounds of an argument.
“We should go down,” she said.
“No,” he told her. “Let them do what they will. They are like the storm, mi amor. Their sounds mean nothing.”
And they stayed in the linen room, holding hands, Jose kneeling before her as he had under the orange trees, telling her stories she chose to believe.
21
Never underestimate the resourcefulness of a college guy searching for booze.
After ransacking the refrigerator looking for ice for Ty’s head (and, more important, beer), Chase and Markie found a storage room in the back of the kitchen with an industrial freezer. They decided to open the freezer on the theory that any self-respecting hotel would have vodka on ice.
They were right. The vodka was wedged right between the corpse’s feet.
Chris Stowall lay curled in the fetal position, frost on his eyebrows. His skin was the same color as the ice-crusted sides of the freezer.
Next to me, Benjamin Lindy muttered a curse that was probably shocking back in the 1940s. Apparently the old lawyer had gotten some sleep since I last saw him. His shirt was wrinkled and his gray hair was mussed, but he still managed to look like the most dignified person present.
He turned to Chase. “Son, did you touch the body?”
“N-no, sir.” But when Chase looked at me, I got the distinct impression he wanted to say something more. The bad boy attitude had drained out of his eyes. He looked like a kid who’d just been chased by the neighborhood pit bull. I noticed for the first time how he and Markie were dressed. The cutoffs and T-shirts and flip-flops were gone. Now they both wore jeans, hiking boots, dark long-sleeve shirts. Markie had a flashlight clipped to his belt. At Chase’s feet, as if it had dropped there in a moment of panic, was a little hand shovel like a gardening trowel.
“Where were you two going?” I asked him.
Markie stepped between us. “You’ve got a freaking dead man in the cooler, and you’re asking stupid questions? Ty’s already going nuts upstairs. If he hears about this—”
“I’m not upstairs.” Ty was leaning against the cutting board, his hand a little too close to the butcher knives for comfort. His face was seasick green.
“Happy now, Navarre?” he demanded. His words were slurred. “We’re stuck here and this…this Calavera guy’s gonna kill us all.”
“C’mon, man,” Markie said. “That ain’t gonna—”
“Shut up! Try to knock me out with those…those pills.”
“Sedatives,” Chase said defensively.
Ty snorted. “Told you we shouldn’t have come. Told you something would go wrong. Couldn’t get out, could you?”